Outlander Cast Wishes You A Happy Hogmanay

Happy New Year! Or if you’re in Scotland, Happy Hogmanay! That’s the Scottish word for the last day of the year and the New Year’s Eve/Day celebration in Scotland. These are the kinds of things we may have to start familiarizing ourselves with if we’re going to become fans of Outlander. Some of the cast of the planned Starz drama got together to talk about Hogmanay in the above video.

Based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander centers on Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe), a British WWII combat nurse who’s on vacation in Scotland with her husband when she finds herself whisked back through time, landing in war torn Scotland in the 1700s. From there, she’s eventually forced to marry Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), a gallant young Scottish warrior. Her situation is especially complicated, when factoring in the time travel element and the fact that she’s already married to someone back in her time.

Between the group shot and the look of the individual segments, it looks like the Hogmanay video may have been shot at the same time as the Christmas video we saw last week...

Same clothes and costumes, only Hogmanay video went without Caitriona Balfe and Lotte Verbeek this time around. But we get to see Annette Badland talking about some tasty sounding Hogmanay foods, Sam Heughan (sans dog) explaining the festivities, and Gary Lewis and Graham McTavish -- who play brothers Colum and Dougal MacKenzie respectively -- who talk about the inclusion of a glass of whiskey. We also have Nell Hudson mentioning the exciting things they’re going to be shooting some exciting things in the new year.

As we reported earlier this week, Ronald D. Moore says they have four episodes of the Starz drama in the can already. That’s a quarter of the 16-episode first season done! Twelve more episodes to go. That actually seems like a lot, but hopefully it won’t be long before Starz settles on a premiere date for this series so fans can have some idea of when the show is going to arrive. I’m personally crossing my fingers for Spring 2014, but that may be too optimistic at this point. That said, Starz has already begun promoting the series online, between these fun videos, the series’ Instagram and Facebook pages, and some photos and information on the network’s website, so that’s a start, right? In the meantime, I’m still working my way through the first book in Diana Gabaldon’s series, but the more I read, the more I can’t wait for this series to air.

And on the bright side, it’s 2014, which is when Starz has promised to deliver this series to us. So we're that much closer to the arrival. Je suis prest.